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Recruit Is Japan’s Top Contender for Global Internet Domination

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Re: Recruit Is Japan’s Top Contender for Global Internet Domination

#41

Post by tokyodude »

niztk wrote: post #33
ascar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved to Japan to do research for my CS master thesis at one of the top5 universities. While I knew English is not spoken by most Japanese, I was honestly surprised that nearly all the CS students in my lab lack the English skill for daily conversations, let alone have a technical discussion. Considering how international and English dominated CS is and only Japans best students get a place at this university, that…

Indeed, Japan consistently ranks dead last in terms of English proficiency among OECD countries. Heck, it’s even last among Asian economies including developing ones. There’s hardly any i18n for apps/services/portals implemented in Japan barring very few exceptions with minimum and rough execution. The few times I tried to hire Japanese engineering talent, I was shocked by the extreme lack of English aptitude for tho…

This is also IMO one of the big reasons Japanese salaries are so low. The Japanese only know Japanese so they can't jump to better labor markets.

Re: Recruit Is Japan’s Top Contender for Global Internet Domination

#42

Post by Simon_says »

ekianjo wrote: post #34
mr_toad wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Github’s own stats, Japan is eighth in both contributions and sign-ups. https://octoverse.github.com/people

Note that the way Github defines contributions is very fuzzy (signing up and opening a ticket is good enough to be considered a contributor). If we were to measure the number of commits or the number of lines of codes contributed I'd wage the picture would be quite different (and probably worse for Japan, but I could be wrong).

Bug-finding is contributing.

Re: Recruit Is Japan’s Top Contender for Global Internet Domination

#43

Post by tokyodude »

niztk wrote: post #27

I live and run a startup out of Japan and given the engineering talent here or lack thereof, I can almost guarantee that you won’t see any Japanese tech startup going global anytime soon. If anything, they will copy another global innovative company and dominate the domestic market but with no real innovation (look no further than the very mediocre Rakuten). Gone are the days where Sony, Nintendo and others had what…

I agree with your general point (first paragraph) but second? Nintendo is doing just fine are they not? Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Switch Smash Brothers, Switch Splatoon. Labo, etc. The seem to be doing great, still making amazing quality titles compelling to global audiences.

Agree that Sony Japan has not done anything in a while.

Re: Recruit Is Japan’s Top Contender for Global Internet Domination

#44

Post by discordance »

ascar wrote: post #29
niztk wrote: post #27

I live and run a startup out of Japan and given the engineering talent here or lack thereof, I can almost guarantee that you won’t see any Japanese tech startup going global anytime soon. If anything, they will copy another global innovative company and dominate the domestic market but with no real innovation (look no further than the very mediocre Rakuten). Gone are the days where Sony, Nintendo and others had what…

I moved to Japan to do research for my CS master thesis at one of the top5 universities. While I knew English is not spoken by most Japanese, I was honestly surprised that nearly all the CS students in my lab lack the English skill for daily conversations, let alone have a technical discussion. Considering how international and English dominated CS is and only Japans best students get a place at this university, that…

I recently finished up two years working for a large cloud provider in Tokyo, where we would help Japanese companies build on our cloud... so I had a lot of exposure to different Japanese tech company practices.

The hardest part for Japanese folks working in tech is that most documentation for any service, framework or any paper is in English. This puts a high reliance on sites like qiita.com.

It often resulted in an unintended power hierarchy between engineers who could read the official doco in English, and those who became reliant on the English speaking in their team. Occasionally this would result in cases of pawa-hara or teku-hara.

Re: Recruit Is Japan’s Top Contender for Global Internet Domination

#45

Post by astonex »

xrd wrote: post #8

The #1 largest market for GitHub is the US. The second largest group of users is from Japan. I'm surprised there aren't more startups from Japan. The people are tech savvy and the economic malaise exceeding 20 years should be pushing people towards entrepreneurship and risk taking.

Japan is definitely not savvy when it comes to software engineering. I'd say they're not really that tech savvy either. A lot of their tech is very dated.

Re: Recruit Is Japan’s Top Contender for Global Internet Domination

#46

Post by Ultramanoid »

ekianjo wrote: post #31

Recruit is one of the worst domestic companies in Japan. Their services suck, they are badly designed, they are not integrated, they have way too much workforce for the kind of business they are in, I could go on and on. If that's the best that Japan has to offer then the rest of the world is safe.

Agreed. Their marketing push ( not sure with what actual practical purpose ) is remarkable and frankly, annoying, in daily life. Can't take a train, walk down any random street, enter any number of shops / offices / konbini / whatever, without seeing a sticker, ad, poster, clip, from one campaign or another from them.

Re: Recruit Is Japan’s Top Contender for Global Internet Domination

#47

Post by dmix »

ekianjo wrote: post #31

Recruit is one of the worst domestic companies in Japan. Their services suck, they are badly designed, they are not integrated, they have way too much workforce for the kind of business they are in, I could go on and on. If that's the best that Japan has to offer then the rest of the world is safe.

Man it's so depressing looking at what a giant Japan could be in the tech industry if they got their shit together politically, economically, and culturally to bring entrepreneurship and creative risk-taking back.

Their potential talent-to-output ratio has to be one of the worst in the world. Probably the worst if you look at their flashes on brilliance in the 1980s and early 1990s and what they could be today.

This problem goes well beyond their central financial mismanagement with stagflation.

Re: Recruit Is Japan’s Top Contender for Global Internet Domination

#48

Post by tjpnz »

tokyodude wrote: post #41
niztk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, Japan consistently ranks dead last in terms of English proficiency among OECD countries. Heck, it’s even last among Asian economies including developing ones. There’s hardly any i18n for apps/services/portals implemented in Japan barring very few exceptions with minimum and rough execution. The few times I tried to hire Japanese engineering talent, I was shocked by the extreme lack of English aptitude for tho…

This is also IMO one of the big reasons Japanese salaries are so low. The Japanese only know Japanese so they can't jump to better labor markets.

It's getting better at least in Tokyo where the job market has been heating up of late. People aren't as prepared to accept the same shitty salaries that they used to and companies that want to do well are realising that they need to pay their people properly. The companies that haven't have already lost their most capable devs with only the most mediocre, last cab off the rank types remaining.

Re: Recruit Is Japan’s Top Contender for Global Internet Domination

#49

Post by tjpnz »

niztk wrote: post #27

I live and run a startup out of Japan and given the engineering talent here or lack thereof, I can almost guarantee that you won’t see any Japanese tech startup going global anytime soon. If anything, they will copy another global innovative company and dominate the domestic market but with no real innovation (look no further than the very mediocre Rakuten). Gone are the days where Sony, Nintendo and others had what…

>If anything, they will copy another global innovative company and dominate the domestic market but with no real innovation (look no further than the very mediocre Rakuten).

The real kicker was that Rakuten once referred to itself as "the Global Innovation Company".

Re: Recruit Is Japan’s Top Contender for Global Internet Domination

#50

Post by mirimir »

ascar wrote: post #38
niztk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, Japan consistently ranks dead last in terms of English proficiency among OECD countries. Heck, it’s even last among Asian economies including developing ones. There’s hardly any i18n for apps/services/portals implemented in Japan barring very few exceptions with minimum and rough execution. The few times I tried to hire Japanese engineering talent, I was shocked by the extreme lack of English aptitude for tho…

It already starts at school. Learning English with Katakana leads to such an incorrect pronunciation that they basically have to relearn talking in English, when they eventually meet foreigners. I have been to multiple school visits as part of the university program and it's a sad state. But in my experience they are trying to improve it, e.g. by bringing us foreign students to the schools and raising awareness.

For "Sukiyaki Western Django", I've read that Miike just had his Japanese actors memorize the classic western drawl. And that's what it sounds like, to me.
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